As a shark surged toward her in the shallows off Sydney, Leah Stewart says she instinctively threw a “left hook” at the predator — a split-second decision that she believes helped her break free after it dragged her underwater.
Stewart, a primary school teacher, was placed in an induced coma and had part of her left arm amputated following the 13 June attack at Sydney’s Coogee Beach.
She had gone for a late-morning swim in what she described as “crystal clear” water, unaware she was sharing the sea with a shark witnesses later described as a great white measuring up to four metres long.
Stewart said she was wrapping up her swim and nearing the sand when a girl’s scream cut through the calm.
“I turned, and there was a huge, huge fin behind her. It was massive, and at first I thought, ‘Oh, it’s a dolphin’,” Stewart told Nine Network television’s 60 Minutes programme.
Ms Stewart added: “I looked at the size of it and I realised, that’s not a dolphin. And so we just start screaming at the top of our lungs, just like ‘shark, shark, shark’.”
She pushed forward with a few more strokes, then sensed movement beside her and turned to see the animal gliding closer.
“Its face was horrific. I’ll never forget its face, it was huge. And its teeth, and its mouth was massive, and its eyes, it’s just black little beady eyes. We were looking face to face,” Ms Stewart said.
With the shark so close she feared it would lunge at her face, Stewart said she decided she had to strike first.
“I thought, well, which limb am I willing to lose? I’m right-handed, so I decided let’s do a left hook.
“I just kind of throw my left arm, and it just grabs onto my forearm and rips, rips away my skin, my muscle, everything,” she said.
‘Like fighting a dinosaur’
Stewart said shock set in as she glanced down and registered the damage to her hand.
“The next moment, I feel it grab onto my left thigh, and it rips me underwater.”
As she was pulled down, Stewart said she gulped a breath and focused on getting back to the surface, telling herself she had to survive for her young daughter, August.
“I twisted myself around, and I just started punching it over and over and over again, just punch, punch, punch, and it was like fighting a dinosaur.”
She added: “It was so big; it was like punching a brick wall. And I think I must have got a really good one in. And so it let me go, and I just kind of popped back up.”
Stewart, in her mid-30s, was brought to shore with the help of Charlie Verco, an elite paddleboarder who happened to be in the water nearby.
Medics treated her on the beach before she was taken to hospital.
Roughly 10 days after the attack, doctors eased her sedation and she emerged from the coma.
Australian scientists believe rising ocean temperatures are altering sharks’ migratory patterns, a shift that may be contributing to an increase in attacks.
A 12-year-old boy died after he was bitten by a shark while swimming in Sydney Harbour in January.
Three divers were fatally mauled in separate incidents between May and June – two in Western Australia and the third in Queensland.
There have been nearly 1,300 shark incidents around Australia since 1791, of which more than 260 resulted in death, according to a database of shark encounters with humans.
